12/12/2012

Milton: Mitchell must take blame for Ticats front office mess

By Steve Milton

Scott Mitchell should choose the rest of his clothes carefully because he has to wear this.

The buck must stop at his desk because the next desk up is where the bucks start.

To his credit, the Hamilton
Tiger-Cats president has already said he takes full responsibility for
the past dozen months, during which his Canadian Football League team
fell farther behind in developing a franchise-signature general manager
and head coach than they were last autumn. And, if you recall, last
autumn the Ticats front office felt it had stalled right in the middle
lane.

Yes, the team had upset Montreal in
the first round of the playoffs, which it made for the third consecutive
year under Marcel Bellefeuille, but it was annihilated in the Eastern
final and Mitchell, with input from others in the chain of command, felt
Bellefeuille wasn’t the guy to lead the Ticats all the way to the Grey
Cup.

Turns out George Cortez wasn’t
either. With a better team, it says here, even if the defence was rarely
stronger than parchment paper.

But the bigger problem, and the
inherent irony, was that Cortez was not the man to lead the team into
two other places: Guelph, and the new Pan Am Stadium. It was for that,
not for his 6-12 record in his first head coaching gig, that he likely
got the ticket out of town.

Cortez — as you get to know him, a
much nicer guy than you first assume — is a football man and a
fisherman. He is not, and never will be, a salesman.

And the CFL always needs selling at
every level, especially the one that contains the main man, or at least
the face, of the franchise. That’s especially true for a team coming off
a two-steps-back season, heading into a season played completely on the
road and just 19 months away from moving into the new home that
absolutely has to be the final piece of the franchise’s long-term
financial puzzle.

With Bob O’Billovich moving away from
active general managing, Cortez was to take over a lot of that role,
too, a common situation in the CFL. But that role often involves, among
many other things, repeatedly explaining the obvious to the dim … namely
those of us in the media. Not a Cortez strong point, to say the least.

And the “franchise face” has to not
only do, but initiate, a number of other things that are quite distant
from Cortez’s wheelhouse, which is the creation of an offensive
juggernaut. Unless you lived only for the wins, the Cats were a ball to
watch this year because of their offensive potential … and reality. And
that was Cortez at his best, a best that he will probably someday
inflict again upon a Ticat defence.

In the interest of full disclosure,
although this corner railed against the Bellefeuille firing, it also
heartily endorsed Cortez as his replacement, despite warnings from the
Western brethren that he didn’t inherit head-coaching DNA.

So Mitchell wasn’t the only one
around here who erred in judgment. But, because he’s the boss, and
because the team still hasn’t made the Grey Cup in his tenure, and
because of the still-lingering bitterness over the stadium debates, this
mistake will echo across Mitchell’s local image at least until the
shortcomings are corrected in the only way they can be: with a Grey Cup
appearance.

Finding a head coach won’t be as big a
problem as finding the right general manager. There will be no other
head-coaching vacancies in this league until at least next August.

But the new Ottawa franchise will, in
fact must, name a general manager very soon and its deadline has likely
just been moved up now that the Ticats are in the same talent hunt.
And, the CFL hasn’t been the greatest league in developing a GM pool. In
fact, it’s been the worst.

A situation like the Ticats’, in
which a coach hired to win a Grey Cup barely lasts a calendar year, the
team is without a home for a full year, and the club hasn’t been to the
finals of an eight-team league in 13 years, should wobble the franchise
until its very survival is in question. But it hasn’t, and it won’t.
Largely because of Bob Young’s loyalty to the city, but also because
Mitchell has significantly tightened up and refitted the organizational
bolts.

But, on the field, the Cats have
fallen way short and now enter the holiday season without a head coach,
defensive co-ordinator, offensive co-ordinator, general manager, or
director of player personnel. And a 6-12 record tied to the bumper.

They are no farther ahead than they were last November, and are arguably farther behind.

Comments

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Excellent articles by Milton and Lefko. I agree with everyone here. Mitchell should have been turfed and should be tossed out immediately. His legacy (and Young's) is a reign of shame indeed.
And Snake -- Chad Collins ought to be tar and feathered for his small-minded tactics and backroom deals -- of course --- he had many buffoons currently on council to aid and abet him. Very pathetic for the citizens and fans of the Ticats.A once in a lifetime opportunity to replace a stadium and do it right --- lost.
Nothing really to look forward to for a long time with this organization.

2.) For the conspiracy theorists... Scott Mitchell has done such a thorough job of ruining the Ticats you would almost think he is working for the Rogers/Tannenbaum team trying to kill the CFL and bring the NFL into Ontario...

3.) I am going to sell "Mitchell Sucks" t-shirts in the parking lot for the next Labour Day Classic.

4.) Confederation Park was off limits for CFL football but not for soccer and cricket... I will never let go of my anger over the stadium fiasco... and some of the quotes in the following Spec article just incense me...

"Cricket and soccer fields along with 1½ kilometres of new walking trails are part of a multimillion-dollar city plan to upgrade Confederation Park.

A new city staff report says the former campground at the 93-hectare park should be redeveloped into a sports park with a senior cricket pitch as well as a joint use intermediate soccer and cricket field.

Councillor Chad Collins says there is increasing demand for cricket facilities in Hamilton and the park would become the premier site for cricket in the city.

“The clubs have always complained that we don’t have anything that would be a premier site. This would provide for that need.”

He noted a recent consultant report identified cricket and soccer as being the two outdoor sports most in need of facilities in Hamilton."

Apparently the Ticats and CFL football are not considered outdoor sports in need of facilities in Hamilton.

We are forgetting that Scott Mitchell is an employee of Bob Young so the ultimate person of responsibility is Mr. Young.
Mr. Young has only hired people within his companies to run the Ticats and never employed football people to be completely arms length from the business side and this in my opinion is the fatal flaw and why the Ticats continue to lose.

I don't always agree with Perry Lefko, but this time he's hit the proverbial nail on the head.

His retrospective of President Mitchell, aka "The Bully in the China Shop" is a home run by any account, and a far more lethal dose of reality for Ticat fans than that of the Ticat Marketing Dept endorsed tome that The Spec served up earlier this year or last. The evidence against Mitchell, like him or not, is pretty damning and indisputable.

After reading all the news releases and subsequent tweets yesterday, I applaud Mr. Lefko for being the first media type to mention the "long suffering fans". We are far too often overlooked and disrespectfully taken for granted. Look no further than the stadium location fiasco and now the Guelph ticketing extortion.

It remains a stunning curiosity to me that it's the out-of-town reporters feeling sorry for us Ticat fans, who most have our backs, while the local scribes, do their best Detective Sergeant Joe Friday impersonation, focusing on "just the facts ma'am", to avoid The Wrath of Mitchell.

This President grades out as an "F" for failure,
but floats around on soft shoes as if he is some sort of CFL Messiah, proclaiming glory for turning the Ticats into the Chicago Cubs, the CFL's version of The Lovable Losers.

The facts are the Hamilton Tiger Cats finished dead last....again. Like Mudville, there's no joy in The Hammer.

I could see Burke filling Mitchell's shoes in a year or so, if the plan for Scott to parachute out and captain some of Young's other ships is still in effect.

While Burke has been leading the administrative side of running a team for almost 2 years, directing the football side of a team is another world (even if he's been learning a bit about it, as noted in a previous Spec story)

Tried that with Rob Katz some years ago and he had to lean heavily on his football people... too heavily I think, in retrospect.

I never understood why you would move Burke,a guy who organized personal appearances for Stripes and has spent a large part of his time with the cats inflating jumpy castles to the football side of opperations.Hopefully Shawn will continue to work hard as a roadie for Danny Mac and earn his stripes.I hope Dee Webb is horribly mistaken!